Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/119

 "You answer," he said stolidly.

"It's him that's always telephonin'," she explained. "He's after wantin' you to go and play tennis."

"You tell him I can't go," Neale repeated.

Katie retreated astonished. Neale heard the sound of her voice at the telephone two flights below. Then she shouted up, "Neale!"

He went to the stairs and answered crossly, "What?"

"He wants to know will you be goin' this afternoon?"

"No!" shouted Neale, leaning over the banisters.

In a moment she cried again, "He wants to know will you be goin' to-morrow morning?"

"NO!" shouted Neale again, and going into the bathroom locked the door behind him.

When rather damp as to hair, he came out, silence and the smell of frying bacon told him that Katie had left the telephone to get his breakfast ready. Gee Whiz! He didn't want any breakfast, not with a taste like that in his mouth.

To act the part of a lone wolf of sixteen, one must read poetry. He had never read much poetry except some of Milton's Paradise Lost, for a specially loathed English Literature course at Hadley. But there were plenty of poetry books in the library at home. After some false starts, Neale began to know his way among them, concentrating on the slim volumes with paste-board covers and paper backs.

Yes, Neale too would hold up an unbowed, bloody head.

Sitting alone in the darkened library how Neale soaked himself in this sort of thing, hunting up one page and down another till he found the voice that spoke to him.